NYC Bribery Conviction Overturned in Case of DeBlasio Ex-Donor Jona Rechnitz

NYC Bribery Conviction Overturned in Case of DeBlasio Ex-Donor Jona Rechnitz

Edited by; TJVNews.com

In a significant turn of events, Jona Rechnitz, a donor to former Mayor Bill de Blasio, has had his conviction in a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme overturned by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the New York Post reported on Wednesday. The court granted Rechnitz’s request to discard his five-month prison sentence and $12 million restitution order over his involvement in a plot to bribe Norman Seabrook, the disgraced head of the Big Apple jails union, to direct union funds into a failing hedge fund, the Post report indicated.

The grounds for the appeal were based on the potential conflict of interest posed by the presiding judge, Alvin Hellerstein, in the case, the Post report said.  According to the ruling, Judge Hellerstein failed to recuse himself from the proceedings due to his close personal ties to Andrew Kaplan, a staffer at Platinum Partners, the hedge fund involved in the fraudulent scheme. The Post also reported that Andrew Kaplan was the son of a close personal friend of the judge who had passed away more than a decade ago.

“The judge not only had a close, near-paternal relationship with Kaplan, but he also advised Kaplan on how to proceed in his pending criminal case arising from the Platinum fraud,” the ruling from Wednesday reads, as was reported by the Post.

This raised serious concerns about the impartiality of the judge in the matter. Interestingly, the Post report noted that Judge Hellerstein had previously recused himself from another case related to the Platinum Partners fraud in which Kaplan was a defendant and cooperating witness.

As a result of this ruling, Jona Rechnitz will be resentenced, and a different judge will oversee the new proceedings, as was reported by the Post. Until this appeal, Rechnitz had not served any prison time, as his sentence had been put on hold pending the outcome.

The Platinum Partners fraud case saw Murray Huberfeld, the head of the hedge fund, plead guilty in 2018 for ordering Rechnitz to bribe Norman Seabrook, according to the Post report. Huberfeld was initially sentenced to seven months in prison, but the sentence was overturned. Rechnitz, who cooperated as a key prosecution witness during Seabrook’s trial, testified about delivering a $60,000 bribe to the union boss in a leather Salvatore Ferragamo bag, as was reported by the Post.

Norman Seabrook himself was convicted in 2018 after a previous trial against him resulted in a hung jury. The Post report said that he served 22 months in federal custody before being released in March of this year.